While I was gone, I got a call that he was limping a bit and didn't seem to want to stand for a long time. I had Tamara watch him and see if he was in any pain, refusing to stand, non weight bearing...nope none of that other than toe touching and had quite a waggle to his walk.

I decided to wait until I got home to deal with it. Took him to the vet today....severe hip dysplasia. Vet said one of the worst cases he's seen in a long while. Essentially Doogie has no ball and almost no socket. His hip was "out"..sort of since there is really no in for it to be out of.

So we are looking at surgery, but probably not for another year when he and his joints have matured a bit. In the meantime, I'm putting him on Ester C and continuing his glucosamine, fish oil and coconut oil hoping to manage it until he's matured.

We have no idea what he did to pop his hip out...and he never indicated any pain or discomfort.

On a side note...he doesn't come up out of telazol well...little tripper boy growled at everyone but me.

Yep it can basically slide out without actually having to do anything, should make the next year fun....he may feel better with pics...but not tonight, gotta go grocery shopping and to find him some Ester C.

We had a four month old stray GSD pup come into the vet clinic I worked at like that. Worse they'd ever seen. I took him as a compassion case thinking he probably wouldn't live past a year or so. Sweetest dog....named him Petie. I kept him small, we did a femoral head/neck on the worse hip and he did well and lived to be almost 10! *hugs*

~Jeanine

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

My assumption is a femoral head on Doogs when he's about 18 months or so, if possible we are going to wait for his joints to mature a bit more. I am confident it'll be fine....I told Mike, instead of saving in the vacation fund...we now save in the Doogie's cute hips fund

HD ain't the end of it, not by a long shot! But it can be discouraging to hear about anything Chronic.

Have you considered Cartrophen or similar products? Swimming will do wonders for the muscles around the joints too if you can get him to go in calmly

Give Doogie an extra treat for me.

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day, tomorrow doesn't look good either.
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"You didn't know of the magical powers of the break stick? It's up there with genies and Harry Potter as far as magic levels go." SisMorphine 01/07/07

Malli wrote:Swimming will do wonders for the muscles around the joints too if you can get him to go in calmly

Agreed. Any low-impact exercise you can get him to do (calmly, LOL) will help strengthen the muscles around his hip joints and that will help stabilize his hips. We've done this with Mac and his hips are still "okay", but he's not as bad off as the Dooge.

Never make someone a priority in your life when that someone treats you like an option.

Calm...low impact..did you guys forget he's a puppy???? Actually, he's a pretty calm dog so while I refuse to try to keep him from being a puppy, we are monitoring activity and making sure there is plenty but it's relatively low impact.

We will begin Ester C which has shown some help with HD...and continue the low impact exercise and go from there.

I wish I had a scan of the xray..you guys would be saying something like I did ... which is "where's the hip"

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day, tomorrow doesn't look good either.
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"You didn't know of the magical powers of the break stick? It's up there with genies and Harry Potter as far as magic levels go." SisMorphine 01/07/07